Elphaba's Son
by TheGreenGirl
Summary: Wicked bookverse...I know this has been overdone, but...what if Elphaba had woken up after giving birth to her son? Would she have kept him? What would she have done...READ AND REVIEW, please, if you want updates!
1. For the First Time

The birthing room at the mauntery was a dark, dank place, gone long unused. It was small and cobwebby. The high windows along the far wall were draped with heavy brown sack curtains that allowed only slivers of yellowy light to escape, and the only other light was a guttering torch near the door. In the wide metal bed in the center of the birthing room Elphaba lay still, holding her knees to her chest, trying to assuage the pain that pulsed between her legs. Her hair clung to her sweaty forehead, eyes fighting to stay open.

For the first time in hours, she was alone, and she savored it. The door of the room still swung creakily on its hinges from where the attending maunt had rushed out, cradling a slimy newborn in her arms. The novices had followed after her, too terrified of the green woman to apply balm to Elphaba's sore body like they had been ordered to, and now she was blissfully alone.

Elphaba blinked, listening to the mutterings in the infirmary next door. If Frex was right, and the Unnamed God punished babies for their parents' sins, then the child would be maimed beyond recognition.

The whining cry of a newborn escaped from the walls of the infirmary, and Elphaba's heart jumped, in a mixture of anger and excitement. Had she really been hoping for a stillbirth? The infant wailed again, and she turned her head away from the noise, wishing it could be stifled, or at least ignored.

"He wants his mother, Miss Elphaba. You have a beautiful baby boy," the attending maunt said from the doorway.

"I don't want it," Elphaba said, not looking the woman in the eye. The baby began to cry again, and she felt a pang in her chest at the sound of its voice. "It will be better off without me."

The maunt moved in towards her. "Miss Elphaba, if only you would tell us where the father is we might—"

Elphaba slammed her fist on the mattress in frustration. "_I can't_—" she began, almost hissing, her breath coming short in her throat.

"The baby deserves a father _and _a mother," the maunt chided.

Elphaba wiped a stray tear from her eye with the blanket. "I can't take it," she said.

"I don't want it." She thought of her own childhood, her own drunken, distant mother. _She didn't want _me _either_, Elphaba thought, remembering. _The old midwives of Nest Hardings should have drowned me the minute they saw my skin, to spare me the pain of what was to come._

The attending maunt didn't respond. She had never presided over a birth before, having been confined to the cloister of celibate maunts since girlhood, and the images of the scene from minutes ago haunted her. "I'll go fetch the child," she said, finally.

Elphaba shook her head and tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat. She knew if she saw the child she could not abandon it. Even hearing the infant's cry created pangs of longing in her chest.

The attending maunt brought the boy in wrapped in a blanket. The shadow of a novice flung open one of the heavy curtains, filling the room with dusty yellow light, and the maunt lowered the baby into Elphaba's limp green arms.

At first, Elphaba could not look the child in the eye. She was afraid of what she would see—Fiyero, or herself, or a mirror of Nessarose's twisted form, or something else, something unimaginably freakish or frightening—

She saw perfection.

The baby boy was not green, or crippled, or deformed. He had a dusting of the same mysterious coal-black hair as Elphaba's, and, even moments after birth, eyes the same piercing sapphire as Fiyero's had been. His tiny, reddened fists clenched and unclenched themselves, in the miracle of the beginnings of movement.

Elphaba's long green fingers traced her son's cheek. A tear caught in the corner of her eye and slid down her cheekbone, burning like fire. She brushed the child's damp, sticky black hair with her finger, ignoring the pain, thinking only of Fiyero.

"Have you thought of a name, Miss Elphaba?" the attending maunt said, hovering over mother and child.

Elphaba shook her head, words caught in her throat. "I can't—" she said, again, trying to refuse her son. "I can't take him—" it was barely above a hoarse whisper.

The maunt smiled. "Don't worry, the name will come," she said. "You've done well with him, whatever control you had. Exceptionally alert, and with such strong muscles." She admired the child from above. He was exploring his newfound abilities, opening and closing his gummy mouth like a fish, curling his toes and blinking lovingly up at the pinched green face of his mother.

Elphaba's face was soaked with burning tears. Fiyero danced in the baby boy's eyes, a reminder of what they could have had, a memory of what it was like to be in love.

But it was too late, Elphaba saw. She was in love again. The pain of it had beaten her down, again and again, and always she slipped back under its spell. She had hoped that she, like Melena, would have been exempt from motherly love or feeling, but this child had her under his spell. She choked back a sob.

The attending maunt moved away to let mother and child alone, and the novices followed after her, whispering in awe.

When the maunt returned an hour later, Elphaba was asleep, her green arms looped around the baby boy snoozing against her breast. Her chin sagged against her son's silky scalp. _Even with Elphaba's skin, _the attending maunt thought, _they were the perfect picture. _

For the first time since her arrival at the mauntery, the green woman looked at peace.


	2. The Nameless Son

Elphaba kept her nameless son in a cradle by her bedside. She remained under a rule of self-enforced silence except at nights, when curious novices who hung outside her room said they could hear her murmuring her son to sleep. During the daytime, green Elphaba cradled her son in the crook of her arm, or lay him in a rush-bottomed basket to sleep. She kept away from the maunts and the novices, scrubbing flagstone floors with the baby strapped to her back or tending to patients in the infirmary while he slept nearby.

"He's a week old, Miss Elphaba, you must give him a name," warbled a large elderly maunt, wiping beefy hands off on her apron.

"And a baptism," added a novice from the far end of the kitchen.

Elphaba stared at her son, lying in a crude cloth sling across her breast. She met his big blue eyes with her gray ones, and he opened his tiny fists and reached for her, whining softly. She bowed her head over the infant and put a long green finger in his tiny fist, mumbling something to quiet him, and then smiled to herself. She knew the name would come.

A bell tolled in the courtyard of the mauntery, and the sister maunt and novice left the kitchen for nightly devotions. When she was alone, Elphaba freed a swollen breast from her black shift and let her son suck. She watched his cream-colored head press against her green skin, and smiled. _He knows no prejudices of color, _she thought. _And I love him so much._

When the boy was asleep, his mouth fallen away from her nipple and his blue eyes closed softly, Elphaba clasped her shift and lay him in his sling on the countertop. She moved to kiss her son's forehead. "We'll get out of here," she said, and brushed her lips against his soft skin. "Soon, I promise. You won't grow up here."

_But where will he grow up? Where can I go? The cold, dark poverty of the Emerald City? The suffocating wealth of Colwen Grounds? _Elphaba stared in despair at the sleeping child, hesitating, and then moved to the summer vegetables the maunts had set her to clean. It was these times, when her son was asleep, that she thought of Fiyero, and of her future, and her past; of how Elphaba, the rebel, the loner, the sharp skeptical, had become the gentle, tender, worried mother.

The sister maunt returned to the kitchen as Elphaba was halfheartedly washing the radishes, wearing a big calfskin glove to avoid the wet. "I never understood why you didn't come to the devotions," the old maunt said, wiping her brow. "It's good for the soul."

Elphaba glanced at her sleeping son. "I have no soul," she said, soberly.

The maunt laughed garishly and picked at her tooth, but said nothing. She was a little frightened by the green woman, despite her youth. She had heard Sister Aliena tell of Elphaba's arrival at the mauntery: wrists bloodied, eyes sunken and blank, steeped in wordless grief on the cold night of Lurlinemas. It was creepy, to say the least.

A small knot of novices entered the kitchen reluctantly, bidden to help with dinner preparations, and drifted towards the baby boy lying on the countertop. The maunt watched Elphaba stiffen as they approached her son, cooing, wishing and chattering. The green woman's fists clenched tightly, her knuckles turned almost white.

"Leave him alone, he's sleeping," Elphaba interjected, finally, when the boy was hidden from her view by ample bosoms and untied headscarves. They were the first words she'd said in weeks, and the novices slunk away immediately, resenting her though she was only a few years their elder.

The sister maunt opened her mouth to say something, but Elphaba had already gathered her son in her arms. Head bowed over his sleeping form, she returned wordlessly to the spring vegetables, retying the sling around her bosom and setting him in it where he could not be touched.


	3. Diamonds and Irises

**Okay, so Iknow this is a short chapter, but I'm testing something out. A lot of you ar probably expecting the name Liir for the baby, if I'm right, but that was the name given to him by the maunts, not by Elphaba. I picked a name myself, one that seemed like something Elphaba would give to her son, something unconventional—but if that's weird for everybody, I can change it to Liir. It just seemed like I was exploring a different pathway for the story and this was the name that came to me. Comment back, tell me what you think—btw, if you don't know, Azure is ****"blue" like the sky, but I suspect you all could figure that out. It seemed…significant…**

"_Azure_," Elphaba whispered, softly, kneeling by her son's cradle like a maunt at prayer. "_Azure_." Her lips brushed her son's ear as she spoke his name, testing it out on her tongue, knowing that she had found the color of his soul.

The baby mewled in his sleep, and Elphaba stroked his cheek to quiet him. _Fiyero_, she thought, _our son has a name. I cannot turn my back on him now. He has a name._

Azure woke moments later, and even in the watery darkness of the moonlit room his huge blue eyes had a mysterious luminosity to them. Elphaba lifted him into her arms and unbuttoned her nightshift so he could suck at her breast, cupping his drooping head in her hand and then in the crook of her arm. For the thousandth time, Elphaba in her overwhelming loneliness and need thought of Fiyero, and there was a sharp pang in her chest.

_Yero, my hero. I am alone_. _I am alone and in love, and I cannot bear it._

Azure wailed softly, turning his head away from Elphaba's breast. She felt tears in the corner of her eyes. "If you knew your father…" she whispered, to him, or perhaps to herself. "I wish you could know him. I wish he could know you."

Azure blinked slowly and lovingly up at his mother, almost understanding. She looked away from him and bit her lip until she drew blood, determined to hide her tears from her son, determined that he wouldn't see her pain.

Later that night, Elphaba stood with Azure in her arms and paced the length of her simple cell, past the bed and chamber pot and the unused prayer stool. She paused in front of the single narrow window and looked out for a moment, at the wide cobblestone courtyard spread below her, lit by the round blue face of the moon. Azure watched the night sky as if mesmerized, stretching a hand towards the glass to touch the unreachable stars.

Elphaba sat up all night, even hours after Azure had fallen asleep, Fiyero's blue diamonds dancing in her wavering dreams.


	4. Beginning to Snow

When the dawn crept into Elphaba and Azure's cell, she was at last asleep, slumped in a chair next to her son's cradle. Her hair fell in front of her face like a stringy curtain, her forehead resting in her long green hands. She looked exhausted and haggard, her breathing rough and ragged.

Only when Azure began to cry did Elphaba awake. She fed him first, and as he sucked he stroked her chest tenderly with his tiny fingers, caressing her. When the infant was full he turned his head away from her nipple and nuzzled his forehead in the soft skin between her breasts, mewling. She laughed at the sensation, startling herself—it had been _so _long since she laughed.

Elphaba bathed Azure in warm water—he gurgled happily, loving the feeling of wet on his naked body—and managed to keep her own fingers dry. When he was clean, she wrapped him a cloth and he lay in his cradle, cooing, while she cleaned herself, standing in the shadows. Elphaba rubbed shining oil on her deep green skin, between her legs, thinking of Fiyero and the nights in the Emerald City.

Well-oiled and dressed in long, billowing black skirts, Elphaba took Azure to the offices of the Superior Maunt. When she strapped him to her back with a strip of cloth, he began to flail and beat his tiny fists against her neck to be released, wailing pitifully. He calmed quickly when she held him in her arms, pressing him to her bosom and crooning into his hair, and Elphaba felt a surge of relief and happiness.

The Superior Maunt greeted Elphaba and her son at the door. She was an elderly woman, with wispy gray hair and thick creases of age at her mouth and eyes, dressed in a long black headscarf and a thin, simple gray shift. The maunt watched Elphaba warily as the green woman stalked into her chambers, the infant lying still in the crook of her arm.

"Miss Elphaba. A guest in our mauntery for over a year now, and this is the first time I've met you. And your son. What do you call him—?" The Superior Maunt shut the door gently behind them and waited for a response, but Elphaba said nothing. She sat in a chair in the far corner of the large, airy room, and stroked Azure's cheek with the back of her long green hand.

"There is no rule of silence here, Miss Elphaba. I'd love to know his name, he's a beautiful child."

The green woman seemed to struggle for a moment before finally willing herself to speak. "Azure," she whispered, forcefully. "I call him Azure."

"After his father, no doubt," the Superior Maunt said, kindly. It was tradition in the Emerald City to name sons for their fathers, and tradition was rarely broken.

Elphaba did not answer. Instead, she raised her head and looked the maunt fiercely in the eye. "I have to leave. That's why I came here," she said, her voice no longer a whisper. "I—I can't live here anymore, I can't let Azure—" she bowed her head again and softly touched her son's closed fist, unable to finish.

"Where will you go?" The Superior Maunt's brow was knit in concern.

Head still bent, Elphaba murmured, "I don't know. _Away_."

They sat in silence. The green woman stared, transfixed, into the eyes of the baby lying on her breast, and the Superior Maunt watched them, with a mixture of—was it jealousy?—on her worn face.

Finally, she spoke. "Oz is a cruel, cold place for a lonely mother and child, Miss Elphaba. You

have a _home _here, you and—and _Azure_."

Elphaba's reply was cold. "I don't have a home anywhere," she said, emotionless. "Neither

does my son."

"We can care for him," the elder woman coaxed. "We can feed him, clothe him—more than

you will be able to do once you've left us. If you stay here, you'll have food, religion, guidance—"

Elphaba shook her head, her face twisted unpleasantly, and looked at the floor. "I tried to give him up," she said, holding back tears, trying to convince herself. "I—I tried to leave him. I told myself I wouldn't look at him, I'd—I'd leave him before I could get attached."

The Superior Maunt's face melted into concern and fear. "And then…"

"And then I heard him cry, for me—" Elphaba's face was wet with tears. "I couldn't. I can't leave him here, I can't let him grow up here," she said, and then her voice became a forced whisper. "_I love him so much_."

The Superior Maunt reached tenderly towards Elphaba, to touch the young woman's clenched green fist. Elphaba made a strangling noise and drew away, wiping her cheeks, her face contorted in pain. "If you love him, Elphaba—" the elderly woman whispered.

The green woman grimaced at the sound of her name and gritted her teeth, biting back a surge of unbidden emotion.

"Tomorrow," she said, her voice strained. "Tomorrow we'll leave."

"It's _snowing _outside," the maunt said, imploringly.

Elphaba only shushed Azure, who was fussing softly after being rudely awoken, and did not look the other woman in the eye. She left the Superior Maunt's chambers without another word.

Later that afternoon, as she mopped the floors of the sloping chapel room with Azure strapped to her back, she considered her options. She could seek out Frex, in the swampy marshlands of Quadling Country—but she could not let Azure relive her cruel, lonely childhood in the foul-smelling bogs of a forgotten slum-land. She could return to her apartment over the corn exchange in the Emerald City—but Fiyero's blood, and his memory, still lived there. She could not face the idea of returning.

Just then, Azure awoke from his deep slumber with a small wail, and Elphaba set her mop down and unstrapped him from her back. She undid the cords of her black cloak, shed it, and lay it in folds on the floor. With a piece of string and a few barter tokens from her pocket, Elphaba made a mobile to amuse Azure while she finished her cleaning, and watched smilingly as he lay on his back and batted at the dangling coins with tiny fists.

The bells in the old stone tower tolled to call the maunts to their devotions. Elphaba looked silently through the archway that led into the courtyard where the religious women were communing, a faraway look in her eyes. The murmuring of prayer and the swells of song wafted into the chapel as more and more black-clad women bowed their heads and knelt on the flagstones of the square.

By the time the maunts had deserted the courtyard to return to their duties, Azure had calmed, lying limply on his cloth and watching the makeshift mobile swing and glitter in the golden light of the chapel. Elphaba watched him lovingly, and somehow still in pain—as if, after all she had been through, they came hand in hand: love and pain, pain and love. _Or were they one in the same?_

When the floors of the chapel shone with wax and wet, Elphaba fed Azure on a bench in the courtyard. The boy's tiny hands stroked the tender skin of Elphaba's breast as he sucked, in the way Fiyero had done in the wake of a heated night of lovemaking. Everything about her son reminded Elphaba of her lost lover: the way he blinked his big blue eyes at her; the way he slept with his feet tucked underneath him, curled in a _U _shape; the way Azure's dusting of hair was the same deep brown as Fiyero's had been.

Azure was perfect, and that was what frightened her: _could her son, who was so beautiful—so flawless—ever love somebody as ugly and scarred and broken as she was? _In her tortured dreams at night—if she slept at all—Elphaba saw Azure leave her, for somebody like Glinda; she saw him hate her for her ugliness, inside and out.

She held him tightly to her breast, feeling his light caress against her skin, never wanting to let go.


	5. The City in Winter

The next morning Elphaba, dressed herself in a heavy black cloak and thick army boots, wrapped Azure in layer upon layer of wool cloth and fleece. His fragility—and vulnerability—still awed her. She was frightened for him, beyond telling, filled with insurmountable need to shield him, to hold him close: _if Fiyero could not survive in this cruel world—_

Elphaba shook her thoughts away and gathered Azure into her arms. In the main hall, an assembly of maunts was gathered beneath an archway, wrapped in muted winter cloaks and scarves. They watched quietly as Elphaba entered, Azure an unrecognizable bundle of fleece in a strap on her chest, a beaten leather carrying case under her arm. Her long, pinched green face stuck out from beneath the wide brim of a cone-shaped black hat shed had found in an old mauntery storage bin, the prow of her sharp nose wrapped in a faded brown scarf.

A rickety taxi hired by the mauntery waited on the curb, the horses at its front bleating and stamping their hooves, puffs of their clouded breath hanging in the frigid air. Elphaba looked, for a moment, back at the sunken and simple faces of the maunts, and thought longingly of their uncomplicated lives—liturgical services, cleaning and cooking, nightly devotions, prayers before bed.

The Superior Maunt led Elphaba and her son from the gates of the mauntery and paid the cab driver in a wad of crumpled bills and small change. To Elphaba she gave a leather purse full of coins and aging paper money. The green woman received the gift silently, with a nod of her oddly-shaped head.

"I'm sure you will find what you are looking for," the old woman said, wisely. "If you ever need…"

Elphaba nodded and tucked the purse into the folds of her cloak. "Thank you," she whispered, and disappeared into the dimly lit taxi.

"Where to?" the cabby asked from the front seat. His voice was cautious as he watched the shadowy figure adjust herself—and what looked like an infant—on the leather bench behind him. _Now, what the hell was a baby doing in a mauntery? _

"Anywhere," his passenger said quietly. "Away."

With any other customer, the cabby would have pressed for a general direction—one of the districts of the Emerald City, or a nearby suburb. But he sensed it truly didn't matter to her. _Away _was truly where she wanted to be; she wasn't particular. He shrugged to himself and clucked his horses on down the deserted road, still inexplicably uneasy.

The cab ride was long and cold. Azure cried loudly and shrilly, in a way Elphaba had never known him to, flailing his arms in the air, reaching for her. She let him hold one of her fingers in each of his tiny fists, and whispered in his ear while he squirmed and wailed.

"_We're going somewhere better,_" she murmured. "_You and I—we're getting away. Soon we'll find a home, and all the ugliness— I promise you won't know what I knew, the prejudices some people can hold, the fears—_" Elphaba realized she was talking to herself, more than to Azure, and fell silent.

When her son was finally asleep, the green woman moved towards the window of the cab and drew back the heavy black curtains that kept the warmth inside. She wanted to see the city as it had been when she and Fiyero were in love—lit green-and-gold for Lurlinemas, filled with the wafting magic of holiday and grace.

The glass plate wedged into the window space was warped and scratched, but not enough to shield her from the view outside—the carriage had drawn up in one of the central plazas of the Emerald City among mounds of dirty snow. The homeless, so prominent in the sweltering heat of the summer, had drawn into the cover of doorways and alleys, their malnourished children wrapped in tattered blankets, their begging cups and tins clutched in blue, frostbitten hands.

Huddled underneath a striped awning—one decorated with a sad string of golden beads and holly—was a young woman, only a few years Elphaba's senior, who had wrapped herself in a large woolen blanket. Her lips, Elphaba could see as they drew closer, were blue and chapped, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. The skin on the woman's face was pale and waxen and her eyes were sunken into her head, but worst of all was the lifeless infant that the woman clutched to her breast, its shriveled head lulled to one side. She seemed not to realize her child was dead; she glanced down at it tenderly every now and then, as if checking that it had not yet woken from its deep slumber.

Elphaba yanked the curtain closed, her breath caught in her throat. _The Emerald City has not changed, but I have_, she thought, looking down at Azure with tears in her eyes. _I, who was once invincible, who cared only for myself, who was blinded by love and hope—see what I am now. _

She closed her eyes and bent her head over the sleeping form of Azure. The image of the dead child haunted her, even as she held her own warm son in her arms—she could not erase it from her head. The desperation in the mother's eyes as she looked out on the street, unable to believe her child was any more than asleep, unable to let go. _We are all blinded by love_, Elphaba thought. _I am no exception. _

"This is as far as you get, with the money what the nun gave me," the cabby said over an hour later, disturbing her thoughts. "You want to go farther?"

Elphaba opened the curtain again. They were in the financial district of the Emerald City, surrounded by businesses and clubs for wealthy travelers. The cab had drawn to a stop in front of a tall, dark green building with a marble stoop and a gilded archway leading into the winter courtyard. A small, posh café sat on corner, its sign offering expensive frappes and pastries—not a beggar in sight.

"This is fine," Elphaba said, softly. "I'll walk from here."

"You sure? It's cold out there, the kid—"

But Elphaba had already stepped out of the cab, securing a woolen blanket around Azure. "We'll be fine," she said, and dropped two coins onto the seat next to the cabby. "Thank you."

And she stalked away into the thickly-falling snow, becoming quickly invisible amid whorls of white.


	6. For a Dying Child

**I know this chapter is shorter (and a little bit…worse.) But school's starting, and I just want to keep the story going. Expect a better chapter next time, or maybe I'll touch this one up…add a little. **

Azure and Elphaba settled in the small wing of an empty brick building on the fringes of the Emerald City. It was an old textile factory that had been gutted by the Gale Force, boarded up, and abandoned. Various homeless had come and gone from within its walls, leaving behind remnants of their empty lives—a heap of dirty blankets, blankets, a sunken cot and unopened cans of stolen foods. Elphaba used most of the mauntery's money to buy a rusted potbelly stove, desperate to keep Azure warm in the harsh winter of the Emerald City, and made him a bed in a milk crate lined with blankets.

The first week in the Emerald City was the worst Elphaba had ever endured. She ate small portions of food from the cans she had found, rarely bothering to heat it, and ventured out of the building only to empty her chamber pot or get a handful of snow to heat for Azure's bath. Azure began to sleep less and less, and the perfect roundness of his body began to disappear—he was sickly, always fussing, always crying.

And Azure faded rapidly as time wore on. By the time winter had become a late and rainy spring, the cans of food were long gone, along with Elphaba's ready supply of milk for Azure—he was weak and bony with malnourishment. Elphaba rummaged in trashcans and stole food from street vendors in order to keep herself alive, and when she could no longer feed Azure herself Elphaba traded hard labor for weak, watered-down cow's milk. With her baby strapped to her back, she carried carried heavy crates for shippers and movers, scrubbed floors, worked sewing machines and in dying factories and found the rare odd job amongst the upper class of the Emerald City.

Elphaba awoke that morning to bright sunlight, filtering pale and watery and cold through slats in the boarded windows. She had fallen asleep with her head resting on the side of Azure's makeshift crib, wrapped in dirty, tattered blankets to keep warm, and her neck was stiff and sore.

Elphaba unfolded herself and stretched her aching limbs. The small room where they slept was warm, at least, but it smelled of sweat and urine and mold—it was what happened when you lived in such close quarters with an infant. Elphaba checked carefully that Azure was still asleep and then stood to dress herself. She had only two long black shifts, one clean and one stained with grease and dirt and other unrecognizable fluids; the clean one, which fit tightly to her chest and hips, she wore to the houses of the wealthy in a desperate attempt to distinguish herself from the other beggars of the city. She wound her hair tightly beneath the peaked, wide-brimmed black hat that had become part of her daily attire and pushed her numb feet into thick, clunky black boots. Finally, Elphaba rubbed her face with precious oil and wiped down her arms and legs with a dry cloth.

Elphaba glanced down at Azure again. His skin was dirty and his legs were beginning to develop a rash from the rough cloth he was wrapped in all day, but she couldn't spare the time to bathe him—if she wasn't outside soon, begging for pennies and work, they would both go hungry that day.

They were outside in just ten minutes, Azure wrapped in blankets and strapped to Elphaba's back. He had gained weight over the winter, but not nearly enough—he was thin and emaciated, and weak. His lack of muscles made his movements slow and labored; he no longer took interest in the mobiles Elphaba made for him or the ball of leather and twine she had fashioned for him to throw and play with. When she set him on a mat to play Azure barely moved; he couldn't roll over and kicking his legs required great effort.

The first house of the residential district was a massive stone building, four stories high, with limestone pillars and a long, shallow marble staircase that led up to a gold-embossed double-door. Elphaba reached the landing of the stairway breathing heavily and looked back at Azure, who had fallen asleep with his head on her shoulder. He slept so much lately, as food supplies dwindled and his bones and muscles ached to grow.

Before she could even ring the bell, one of the doors swung quickly open and a fat Munchkin maid appeared in front of her. "What do you want?" she asked in a thick accent.

Elphaba drew her gaze away from her son and looked the maid in the eye. "I've come to ask for work. For my child, for food. For milk."

The Munchkin woman shook her head, almost smiling. "The fourth one today. You know times are hard. You know I can't give you anything." She wiped pudgy hands on her apron, and Elphaba thought, _You've never gone hungry a day in your life. You'd let my child die rather than skip a meal. You don't care._

"For my _child_," Elphaba begged. "He is almost four months old today. See how thin he is, how little he weighs—"

"We don't give charity."

Elphaba was near tears, in anger, in pain, in _hatred. _"_Milk_. Just milk, not for me, for my _son_," she said through gritted teeth, reaching back and touching Azure's limp hand. "He'll die if he doesn't get food."

The Munchkin woman looked back at Azure, his small, thin head resting limply on Elphaba's shoulder, and then closed the door. "May the Unnamed God be with you," she muttered, and Elphaba heard a lock click shut.

"Just milk! Milk for a dying child!" Elphaba said, raspily, her breath heavy. She dropped her head to her chest, squeezed her eyes shut, and cried, loose hair hanging in a veil in front of her thin green face.

As she turned to leave, Elphaba glanced at the address placard nailed by the door, still squinting to keep the tears from clouding her vision.

LADY GLINDA AND SIR CHUFFREY

NUMBER 12 GORDON PLACE

THE EMERALD CITY


	7. 12 Gordon Place

** I prooomise next chapter will be better...and longer! ;) Stupid school! **

In the tiny room she shared with Azure, Elphaba thought, _I am killing my child. My pride_ _is killing my child._

Glinda _has food. _Glinda_ can take care of him. Glinda is here, in the Emerald City. She can save my child. Glinda is our chance, our only chance._

His _only chance._

Elphaba lifted Azure from his cradle and held him tightly to her bosom. He was warm, even in the sharp cold of the room, and it frightened her. "_I'm trying_," she whispered. She moved her long green hand to his forehead, to check for fever; it was hot to the touch. "_Oh, my son_," Elphaba murmured, rocking back and forth. "_Oh, my son. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." _

Soon Azure fell asleep in Elphaba's arms, but she could not bear to let him go. She murmured long into the night, holding him tightly to her breast and inhaling his sweet scent. Pride had caused her to turn away from the house of Lady Glinda, and shame had kept her from returning. But love could—and would—trump pride, and shame.

She knew she would go to Glinda the next morning, despite everything, despite her fierce independence, despite the humiliation she knew would come when she begged Glinda for help. Elphaba had always been the one with the future; the one with the possibility do something at her fingertips.

How things _changed_.

She knew she loved Azure so much it _hurt_, enough to forsake her pride, enough to sacrifice everything she had for his well-being.

She had never loved anyone so much before, and it was terrifying.

In the morning, Elphaba awoke early. She had had dreamt of Fiyero all night, and her face was wet with tears.

Elphaba dressed herself in her good black shift, the one with a tailored waist and bodice, and shoved her feet into thick military boots. After checking to make sure Azure was sleeping, she went outside and filled a rusted tin basin with water from the factory's old pump and heated it on the stove. Azure woke soon after the water was warmed, and she put on her heavy gloves and began to bathe him.

He seemed livelier, Elphaba noted. He began to pat the surface of the water with his palms, smiling up at her, so she splashed him a little on his stomach. He crowed in delight and began to beat the water, pumping his little legs, and giggling. Elphaba leaned close to his thin face and endured the stinging water just to be close to him, laughing the way babies were supposed to. He scooped up water in his palms and splashed himself, grinning toothlessly.

Elphaba carried him on her hip all the way to 12 Gordon Place, and he fell asleep on her shoulder with his hands entwined in her long hair. She wrapped him in her cloak before she mounted the mansion's stairs—he was less vulnerable that way, she told herself.

"You again. The green one," the Munchkin said when she opened the door.

"I need to see Glinda," Elphaba said, with the stoutness and determination of her days at Shiz. Azure squirmed a little in her arms and made a mewling sound, begging to be played with, but she shushed him.

"_Lady _Glinda is busy."

Elphaba stared the Munchkin woman in the eye, fists clenched, teeth gritted in defiance. "I need to see her. Let me _through_."

The woman laughed, garishly, revealing a set of gapped yellow teeth. "The green street whore wants to see Lady Glinda of the Arduennas. Do you want tea and crumpets while you wait?" she mocked.

Still chortling, the round Munchkin moved to close the door, but Elphaba stuck her boot in the way. "_No thank you_," she said icily, and shoved the woman aside. _I've come to far to be turned away by a fat maid. _

"Glinda!" Elphaba cried from the entryway. "Glinda!"

Glinda came down the stairs at a clip, looking annoyed. She wore a pale, spring-green dress, one of the more fashionable styles—a tight, corseted bodice and waist, gathered around her knees and flowing loosely down to the ankles—and her hair had been done up on top of her head, decorated with an emerald tiara and jeweled pins. The cut of the dress allowed Glinda very limited mobility, but she came just as fast as it would allow her, daintily barefoot in the comfort of her own home. "What? Oh, _what_, must you always bother me so—" she began snappily, then paused mid-step and mid-word, looking down at the room below her in astonishment. "Elphie…"

Glinda gave a little gasp, and then, to the astonishment of her squat maid, she flew down the stairs, stumbling over the hems of her fine dress as she went. "Elphie!" she cried. "Oh, _Elphie_, I've missed you so much!" She embraced the stiff, straight-backed Elphaba, seeming not to notice or care about the squirming bundle in the green woman's arms.

When Lady Glinda drew away, the caking of expensive powders on her thin face was streaked with tears. "Elphie, oh, _Elphie_," she hiccupped, and tried to embrace Elphaba again. But the green woman drew away, visibly fighting the urge to run.

"Elphie, what are you doing here? It's been—" she stopped mid-sentence. Azure's tiny hand had snaked from its cloth binding and was pawing at Elphaba's breast, a mute cry for food. "Elphie…" Glinda breathed, and backed away.

Elphaba held Glinda's gaze with her hard eyes, blinking evenly. "I need your help," she said, slowly, painfully. Her long green fingers encircled the groping hands of the infant at her breast, and he stopped his whimpering, comforted. "My son is dying," Elphaba murmured.

Glinda's mouth fell open, and she inhaled sharply. "Your…"


	8. Shame and Strength Updated

**Okay, so, summer's here, and I finally got to edit this chapter to give it a little more…substance. It's the same in the beginning, but there's a lot about Glinda that's been added in the middle before she goes into Elphaba's room, because I just wanted to explore her emotions and the way she dealt with the situation. It's a little…different, at least some of the writing and dialogue is. I have another short chapter I've finished and I'll put it up in a little while.**

"My son," Elphaba said, and looked away. Her eyes burned with shame—even Glinda could see it.

"_Elphie_…" Glinda said. "What happened? Elphie, no, look at you, you're—you look sick, you look—oh, _Elphie_, I thought when I left you—"

Elphaba shook her head, painfully. "I just need a bed. For a few nights, and then we'll find something. Just until I'm strong enough to work."

Glinda looked faint. She watched in astonishment as Elphaba unwound the cloth from the bundle in her arms to reveal an infant, visibly weak and emaciated. He had a dusting of black hair on his head and piercing, saucer-sized blue eyes. Elphaba rocked the child a little and helped him push his thumb into his mouth, so he could suck; he tried to right himself in her arms and curled his toes in frustration when he could not find the strength to lift himself.

"Take them upstairs, Meena," Glinda choked, stunned. "Give her milk, give her whatever she needs—" Glinda couldn't bear to look at Elphaba any longer. She turned and fled up the stairs, hobbling comically in the tight constraints of her gown, tears of utter disbelief streaming down her face.

Elphaba and Azure were led to the attic of the mansion on Gordon Place, a large, sloping room decorated with vases of flowers and imitation portraits of long-ago Emerald City diplomats. There was a large steel-framed bed in the center of the room, piled high with throw pillows and quilts, a claw-footed bath behind a curtain, a carved table next to a grated bay window and a potbellied stove near the wall. The Munchkin maid gave Elphaba a jug of milk, and the green woman accepted it wordlessly, her head bowed in shame. When mother and son were left alone, Elphaba laid Azure on the bed, freed him from his tight bindings and put him on a folded cloth in front of the fireplace, to keep his thin body warm.

Azure laid limply on the bed his mother had made for him, and she helped him roll onto his side so he could watch the orange flames licking in the fireplace. He couldn't hold himself there, so she put her hand on the small of his naked back as support and watched the fire with him.

In the parlor adjoining the master bedchambers, Glinda sunk onto a lemon-colored chaise lounge, dizzy and overwhelmed. The lace-trimmed room slid in and out of focus, her vision blurred with tears of anger and disbelief. She curled up on the carefully upholstered cushions and put her head in her hands, and her small frame was racked with uncontrollable and inexplicable sobbing.

When Lady Glinda finally regained her composure, she rolled off the lounge and onto her shaky feet, wiping the last powdery makeup from her tear-stained cheeks. Her hair, carefully done up for a political luncheon of Sir Chuffrey's earlier in the day, had fallen from its crown above her head and framed her face in a knotted, frizzy mane. Hazily, Glinda padded across the room to an elegant bronze mirror by the southern wall; she looked tearfully at her dismal reflection and began to rip the jeweled pins and tiara from her tangled locks, grimacing in pain. Her face set, Glinda attempted to work an ivory comb through her hair, but moments later, with an anguished cry, she hurled it against the opposite wall and collapsed into angry sobs once more.

_She had so much. Elphie was going to go so far. She was going to expose the Wizard, and avenge poor Doctor Dillamond's death. She was going to fight, and fight, for the Animals, for the underdogs—she was going to be my voice, my inspiration. _Glinda tore another jeweled pin from her head and stared at it, her breath coming heavily. A clump of pale blond hair was caught in its clasp; the warm torchlight reflected off of the hundreds of tiny, gleaming emerald surfaces. "Damnit, Elphie!" she said, throwing the thing to the ground. _Elphie—what happened?_

Dusk settled on the mansion on Gordon Place, and with it Glinda's tears dried. She undressed in a daze and put on a cream-colored night slip, and sat at the tall windows of the parlor, watching her watery reflection in the glass. It seemed only moments ago that she had stood behind sharp, wiry Elphaba in their dorm room at Shiz, both of them staring at the green specter reflected in the scratched pane. Glinda blinked back tears again.

_Elphie. Elphie has a son. Elphaba has a…_the thought was too large for her to wrap herself around.

_Elphie…_

For the first time, Glinda thought of the child. Though her eyes had been clouded with tears when she saw him, his face, in her mind's eye, was clear. He had looked far too old to be an infant; his face was wizened and his mouth thin and unsmiling. The boy's unmistakable azure eyes, deep, brooding and thoughtful, were only part of him that showed any life. His little legs were limp, she remembered, his body too weak to lift them. _Elphie, your son…you have a son. _

Later that night, there was a timid knock on the parlor door. "Lady Glinda?" came a soft voice with an accent distinctly Glikkun; one of the maids, Glinda thought, dismissively—she couldn't remember the girl's name.

"Yes, what is it? Come inside, if you must." She wiped tears furiously from her eyes, and attempted futilely tountangle her once regal-looking hairdo. "Go on, don't be afraid," Glinda said when the door remained steadfastly closed, aware her voice was still unstable and shaky with crying.

The Glikkun maid pushed the door open slowly and cautiously. She wore a traditional maid's costume—an ankle-length black dress and green-fringed apron—with the crest of the Chuffrey family embroidered on her sleeve, and the greasy brown hair above her plain face had been tucked into a lacy green cap. "Supper, Lady Glinda," the girl said, making her way into the room with a silver tray in her arms. She set the dishes on a coffee table near the chaise lounge where Glinda had collapsed only a few hours earlier, and began to edge her way out of the parlor, eyes wide with fear.

"Wait," Glinda interjected, quickly. "Wait, wait, you…I've forgotten your name."

The Glikkun girl looked startled. She didn't think the Lady Glinda had _ever _asked her name; it was not a matter of forgetting. Adjusting her lopsided cap, as though it were a nervous tic, the maid whispered, "Sira. Sira of the…" she trailed off and turned beet red, and seemed to forget.

"Sira," Lady Glinda said, distantly. "Did you see the woman who came here? Elphie? Did you see her, just a little while ago? Her and the baby?"

Sira nodded, her eyes still the size of saucers. "The green one," she offered.

Glinda laughed, emptily. "Oh, Elphie would have hated that. People always only see the green with Elphie, they always did. They do. You know she's still alive? I thought—I thought for sure she was dead, she must be, or else why would she—why—why would she have abandoned Nessa and Nanny and Boq and Crope…and me? Why else if she wasn't dead?" Tears were in her eyes again. The Glikkun maid backed away from her dazed mistress in terror and confusion, and Glinda continued obliviously. "Turns out…she's not," Glinda said, with a hollow chuckle. "Turns out, she has a baby. A little boy. A little—" she choked, "—a little boy who loves her. Turns out she fell in love. Elphie in love! Can you imagine that? Elphie in love, and now with a little baby. And me all alone, in a cold house, with a cold husband. Isn't it funny how things turn out?"

Glinda had forgotten Sira altogether by now, and the Glikkun girl took the opportunity to flee back to the comfort of the kitchens, and regain her composure there.

"It's funny," Glinda continued, eyes blank. "You know, at first when I saw Elphie, I was happy? I thought, at last she's come back for me. I thought, it will be like at Shiz, we'll be friends, we'll laugh—and then I saw…I saw that little hand! That little hand…things change _so _fast. People change so _fast._ That little _hand_."

Realizing at last that the maid had slipped away, Glinda sighed and lapsed off into silence. She went and locked the door of the parlor, then wrapped herself in a warm fur and sat by the fireplace with her knees pulled up to her chest and a single tear sliding slowly down her cheek. She picked a little at the food Sira had brought her—roast duck in a sauce of caramelized onions and red wine—but she was hardly hungry.

When it had grown dark, Glinda found the house's master key in one of Sir Chuffrey's drawers and slipped out of her parlor. Her anger at Elphaba—for forsaking her so many years ago, for her starving child and her lifeless eyes—had dissolved into sadness and curiosity.

In her fashionable night slip, Glinda mounted the stairs into the attic and gently jiggled the key in its lock until the door creaked open. There was moonlight streaming into the gabled room from the big bay window by the bed, and she could see Elphaba's sleeping form, curled in a fetal position around the body of her infant son.

In the moonlight, Elphaba's deep green skin was almost translucent. Her hard, lined face had softened into something more resembling the form of the spunky Shiz girl that Glinda had loved, but there was no denying it—Elphie was transformed. Every movement she made seemed to be centered around her child. Even in sleep, Elphaba's long green fingers lay gently on his scalp, one hand on the small of his back to assure the boy's even breathing.

_Her son. Elphaba has a son_, Glinda told herself. She bent closer over her friend's sleeping figure to see the child, to make sure he was real. He slept curled in a _U _shape, his tiny legs tucked up underneath him, gently sucking his thumb. Glinda could see his labored breathing was matched with Elphaba's. _In and out…in and out…_Where could the child possibly be from? Was he really Elphaba's, her flesh and blood? He was beautiful…

"Oh, _Elphie_," Glinda whispered, her lips barely moving. There were silent tears on her cheeks again. She hadn't cried like this since the day Elphaba left, almost six years ago. How somebody could _change _in the space of that time, she thought.

Glinda tore her eyes away from the sleeping Elphaba and turned to leave. She thought of facing Elphie in the morning, and she could hardly bear it.


	9. Beautiful Boy

It was Azure who woke Elphaba that morning with the soft, musing coo he had made every morning in the mauntery. She opened her eyes to see him with his nose pressed against hers, cheeks rosy with warmth and eyes sparkling with delight; he reached out and pawed at her cheek with limp, curled fingers. Watching him, Elphaba allowed herself a faint smile.

After a moment staring into her son's wise blue eyes, Elphaba rolled slowly off of the bed, cringing a little as her feet touched the cold floorboards, and moved quietly to the huge hearth at the opposite end of the room. In the soft blue light of dawn breaking over the city, Elphaba looked almost spectral, ethereal, a slip of a green ghost as she stood in front of the glowing embers. She stoked the dying cinders with an iron shaft that had been propped against the stone wall, sending a flurry of orange sparks into the dark depths of the chimney, and then returned to Azure. She moved him to a depression in the center of the bed, wrapped his naked body in a quilt to keep him warm, and found an engraved silver spoon for him to play with. "Are you warm?" Elphaba whispered, pressing her sharp nose against his small, round one. Azure smiled gummily and hit her in the face with the bowl of the spoon that he clutched in both of his little fists.

A knock sounded timidly at the door, and Elphaba jumped, startled, away from her son, as if afraid to be caught so near to him. "Wait," she said, raspily, grabbing her shift from the floor and sliding out of the thin nightdress. "Wait, one minute."

When she was suitably dressed, Elphaba took a piece of cord from around her wrist, knotted her hair up behind her head in a messy tangle, and thrust open the door, expecting Glinda. She wasn't sure if she wanted to face her old friend, or if either of them could bear it, and already her face was dark green with shame from her tattered appearance. But it was only a Glikkun maid, a squinty-eyed cousin of Sira's who stared gapingly up at the green woman from the doorway. "What?" Elphaba said, brashly, convincing herself she was relieved and not disappointed that it was not Glinda knocking.

The maid, her lower lip trembling and her eyes the size of saucers, thrust a tray into Elphaba's hands. "F-f-for you—" she started, blanched, and fled back down the staircase.

Elphaba watched the receding back of the Glikkun girl stiffly and wordlessly, then turned, tray in hand, and returned to her chamber. "Look what we've been brought," she said to Azure, smiling crookedly, as if she was out of practice. The green woman set the tray on the bedspread next to her son, who was watching her attentively with his wide, flickering eyes. There was a clay jug of milk for Azure and a breakfast plate for Elphaba—bread and fruit preserves and a small porcelain tub of butter—and beneath the food a stack of folded clothes, all arranged neatly and delicately. Elphaba pushed her breakfast aside to examine the clothing, and saw that beneath them somebody had tucked a small glass vial of oil, the kind Elphaba had always used to clean herself with in Shiz.

Elphaba unfolded three sets of infants' clothes—trousers and shirts and booties made from the softest, best-woven fabric in the Emerald City—and beneath them a simple black wool dress with a finely crafted button-up bodice. She shook tangles of hair from her eyes and looked shamefacedly down at her own dress, stained and shapeless and tattered. "I suppose we must learn to take charity," Elphaba said, more to herself than to Azure. She laughed bitterly. "I wonder what I would have said four years ago if somebody had told me I would be getting my food, clothes and shelter from Glinda of the Arduennas."

Her long green fingers trembled as she unwound the quilt from Azure's small, frail body. She dressed him in a blue silk shirt and trousers, the least gaudy of the garments she had been given, and slipped his tiny feet into soft leather booties; her son's gaunt, sallow frame was hidden in the folds of well-tailored clothing, and in them he looked well-dressed and healthy. _You look like a wealthy businessman's son_, she thought, cupping his small head in her lithe green hands and lifting him to her breast. _You look like…like you don't belong in the arms of a tattered, green-skinned pauper. _

_Are you really my child, beautiful boy?_

Azure grunted and reached for her, brow knitted in consternation, watching the tears slide down his mother's cheeks with a sad look in his deep blue eyes. Elphaba gazed down at her son for a long time, communicating to him with her dark, sad eyes something she had forgotten years ago how to say with words. She felt within her a love so deep, so much a part of every fiber of her being, that she could hardly begin to fathom it.


End file.
